The techniques used by maintenance facilities and shop practitioners for sharpening such implements as mower blades, chipper blades, field assemblies and the like heretofore have been somewhat conventional. Shops carrying out these sharpening procedures typically will have one or more of the ubiquitous dual stone or grinding wheel bench grinders. These grinders are fashioned as an electric motor, the elongate shaft of which supports oppositely disposed grinding wheels. Personnel selected to carry out sharpening duties usually are seen to be hand supporting the implement being sharpened upon a small bracket positioned at about the center height before the stone. Given an experienced operator, this sharpening procedure is effective, but dangerous and accident prone. Of particular note, the procedure is slow and quite fatiguing to the operator. For the most part, only shop personnel of somewhat extensive experience are called upon to perform sharpening tasks. For newcomers to the art, a considerable training interval generally is called for.
Some grinding jig assemblies have been introduced to the industry, but have shown little improvement over the above, basic technique. For example, some blade sharpening assemblies position a grinding wheel partially within a slot formed in a support surface. The blade is then drawn by hand along a stationary blade guide and grinding occurs at a location below the rotational axis of the grinding wheel. That location tends to undesirable binding conditions or phenomena. Additionally, such techniques, as well as other elaborate approaches, will not accommodate to more recent mower blade designs having aerodynamically based contours.